The Diameter Credit Control Application is specified in RFC 4006. It can be used to provide real-time credit control for various applications, including, for example, messaging services, gaming services, video services, etc. The Application is used between the network element providing the service (client) and a credit control server. Redirection of sessions is used by Diameter Credit Control Applications (DCCA-RFC 4006) as a means to redirect a user to a different destination to engage with additional services. This includes, for example redirection of prepaid users to a service for adding additional credit to a prepaid account in a top-up process. Redirection is a key enabler for advanced charging features such as On-The-Fly top-up.
However, while some online charging systems support redirection of sessions, others do not support this functionality. These online charging systems would simply return a result-code 4012 DIAMETER_CREDIT_LIMIT_REACHED, and would expect the user to access the Top-up server in a new session directly. In such cases the user session is terminated. This is disadvantageous to the user because the user is unable to easily continue with the activity the user was engaged in. This is also disadvantageous to the service provider, because the user may choose not to consume further services and/or may choose not to add additional credits to their user account.
It would therefore be desirable to provide systems and methods which overcome the limitations of online charging systems which do not natively support redirection functionality.